Wyden Cosponsors Bill to Compensate Servicemembers for Miscalculation of Leave Time Under PDMRA
Washington, D.C. – As the bureaucratic struggles over the Defense Department’s handling of the Post-Deployment Mobilization Respite Absence (PDMRA) program continue, U.S. Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), has joined U.S. Senator Herb Kohl (D-Wisc.) and other Senate colleagues in introducing legislation to restore miscalculated leave time and compensate servicemembers for their missed leave.
The Fair Military Leave Act will fix bureaucratic mistakes that miscalculated the leave time owed to hundreds of servicemembers in the Army. Under the program, servicemembers are given additional paid leave after returning home from multiple deployments overseas. However, the DoD miscalculated that leave time for many soldiers. The mistakes were discovered and corrected. Those who are still in the active military will have those days added to the leave they receive after their next deployment; however, that leave is useless to the hundreds of servicemembers who have left the military. This bill compensates those servicemembers for the leave time they were denied.
“When our servicemembers return home from fighting wars overseas, they shouldn’t have to fight red tape in order receive the compensation they are owed,” Wyden said. “These servicemembers earned this benefit, and we cannot allow bureaucratic mistakes to keep it from them. This is not the first problem to come out of DoD’s implementation of PDMRA and I will stay on top of it until the program works for all servicemembers.”
This is not the first time Senator Wyden has fixed problems with PDMRA. After PDMRA was created in 2007, it took an undue amount of time for the Army to implement the program and more than 15,000 servicemembers left the military during the gap between the signing of the law and the implementation of the program. Those servicemembers were denied their leave time and financial compensation in lieu of that leave. Wyden authored legislation to fix the flaw and got those servicemembers the leave they were owed.
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